Svindal and Cuche keep the HEAD Victory roll going with 1 – 2 in the Lake Louise Super G.

After the victory in the Giant Slalom for Ted Ligety in Soelden and in the Lake Louise Downhill for Didier Cuche, Aksel Lund Svindal made it three from three for the HEAD World Cup Rebels by winning the Super G in Lake Louise. It was so nearly a double win for Cuche but Svindal, who had been a little disappointed with his Downhill result on the Saturday, “definitely got one today” in referring to needing to put in a good fast run to beat his HEAD teammate, Cuche. Despite the adverse weather conditions, Svindal was just under a quarter of a second ahead of Cuche with Adrien Theaux in third almost three quarters of a second back.

The topic of the course setting was generating a lot of discussion as there were nine gates more than last year before the start had to be lowered due to the high winds at the top. “I really liked it; he (Ante Kostelic, the course setter) can set every Super G like that. It was a technical Super G, it was turny and the speed was not so fast. It was really nice because he had some change between going a little bit faster and than again, turny. It was a course where you had to think more than in the past races in Lake Louise,” Cuche commented on the course setting.
Cuche came down into the finish and took the lead in superlative form. While he was one of the first of the top seeds, other racers, including Svindal still had to try and improve on their performances from the day before in the Downhill.

“I was a bit disappointed about yesterday; I was not able to carry the speed all the way down. So today it was a whole lot better,” Svindal said. This was Svindal’s sixth World Cup Super G win and third in Lake Louise.

While Svindal and Cuche made the top two spots, young Austrian Matthias Mayer placed 8 (a career best result so far in the World Cup), Bode Miller 9 and Johan Clarey came down from 61 to place ten! Five HEAD Rebels in the top ten! Bernhard Graf also posted a career best World Cup result in coming in 19th and Canadian Benjamin Thomsen came from 64 to score his first world cup points.